'More audacious than her male peers': The Renaissance woman who was the first female painter of erotic nudes

Late-Renaissance portraitist Lavinia Fontana was the first professional woman artist to paint a nude female figure, many of them more overtly suggestive than those by her male peers. Were these nudes a statement of rebellion against her prudish father, a commercial choice – or a clue to her inner life?

There were two sides to the trailblazing artist Lavinia Fontana. The first can be seen in her self-portrait from 1577, in which she sits at the spinet dressed in a fine gown and jewels, the epitome of a wealthy, cultured and virtuous young Italian woman, the easel in the background a proud indication of her chosen vocation. Considered the first female professional artist, she was much sought after as a portraitist and would go on to win important commissions for more than a dozen altarpieces, challenging the view that women were incapable of winning such illustrious assignments, let alone executing them. 

The second can be seen in the monumental Minerva in the Act of Dressing, in which the nude goddess appears to have been caught unawares as she is about to slip into a finely embroidered robe. Holding the garment carefully in her hands, she turns to meet the viewer with a gaze that is both coy and suggestive at the same time.

The image was painted for Cardinal Scipione Borgese in 1613, a year before Fontana's death; the fact that a woman was behind it would no doubt have added a frisson for anyone who saw it. As would the knowledge that Fontana had a reputation for creating such images, something of which we have only recently become fully aware. Over the past few years, more works have been attributed to Fontana that reveal her to be not only the first female artist to paint the female nude, but also the first to paint erotic works whose subject matter was often more audacious than that of her male peers. 

At first glance it may seem surprising that these two conflicting sides of Fontana existed simultaneously. "Her self-portraits are very proper. There is never a hint of scandal in her life. So, you think you have a very prim woman. Maybe not," says Patrizia Cavazzini, one of the curators of (Woman) Painter at The National Museum of Oslo, where both the self-portrait and Minerva are on display. However, the art historian Elizabeth Cropper thinks we shouldn't necessarily believe that "public social respectability denies private sexual eroticism… We need to allow some complexity in our understanding of Early Modern women," she tells the BBC.

Whether or not these works are indicative of Fontana's private desires, Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, author of Lavinia Fontana: Erotic Paintings, believes there were specific commercial and entrepreneurial reasons for her to paint both sacred and profane works. "In my opinion, she did it to show she was different… and to draw attention to her compositional boldness," he tells the BBC.  

Her earliest known erotic work was Venus and Cupid, painted around 1585-90. While a nude Venus is hardly an unusual subject in art, Fontana used jewels, veils and pearls to heighten the sensuality. The trope was repeated a few years later when she painted a recognisable noble woman, Isabella Ruini, as Venus. The half-length portrait, no........

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